British surgeon in last functioning Gaza hospitals says they are 'overwhelmed'
A British surgeon working in the last functioning operating theatres in Gaza City has told the Mirror he cannot leave because they are “overwhelmed”. In a series of bleak voice messages Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah said he can only operate to save the dying, those who are “bleeding out”.
His patients this weekend included a six-year-old girl who needed amputating and a nine-year-old boy with a 5cm piece of shrapnel in his bowels. There is no blood left, so patients die after surgery, and the medics have run out of ketamine – used as a substitute for anaesthetic.
Professor Abu-Sittah, who has a wife and three sons at home in London, said: “I can’t leave. If I leave my space is not filled.” He and two other surgeons work from two theatres at a field hospital in the grounds of Ahli Arab Hospital where hundreds died in a blast last month.
The 52-year-old British Palestinian had been due to travel to Gaza before the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, when 1,400 were killed. He has been operating for 33 days straight from two Gaza City hospitals.
Before he left the al-Shifa Hospital, he described seeing “multiple cases of acute malnutrition and dehydration in young children” and 120 cases of “wounded child with no surviving family” at the hospital.
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The World Heath Organisation said it had lost communication with al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital. Israel has repeatedly denied its forces have attacked the hospital, but acknowledges clashes with Hamas fighters in the area.
Professor Abu-Sittah said he can only operate to save the dying (SKY NEWS)The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said yesterday that the nearby Al-Quds hospital had run out of fuel and was no longer operational.
On Saturday, Prof Abu-Sittah described the situation at al-Shifa: “The day before yesterday they fired a missile on an area in front of the emergency department. The following day they fired another into outpatients. That started to drive people out.
“All the internally displaced with the exception of a few thousand left. Any wounded whose family can carry them left. A lot of staff. What is left is the most critically ill and some core staff. But they stopped taking in patients and that’s when we saw the big increase in the wounded coming into the Ahli Hospital.”
Medics have run out of ketamine – used as a substitute for anaesthetic (Anadolu via Getty Images)Prof Abu-Sittah is now based at the Ahli, scene of one of the worst massacres early in Israel’s assault on Gaza. Hamas claims 471 people died in an explosion in its courtyard on October 17 but Palestinian militants and Israeli officials blame each other for the blast.
The surgeon said: “Despite a lot of damage to the buildings, it is now the only hospital functioning. We turned the grounds into a field hospital. We only have two operating rooms. It’s me, an orthopaedic surgeon and a general surgeon and we choose who to occupy the operating room with. The numbers are just overwhelming. They have nowhere else to go. They are all fresh wounded.”
A Palestinian nurse working at Nasser Hospital (Anadolu via Getty Images)Asked how he chooses who to operate on, he said: “Only the life saving, those who are bleeding out. Today I took a six-year-old girl who had above knee amputation and was bleeding out. I had to complete the amputation, stop the bleeding and then a right arm amputation..”
He sent us a photo of a 5cm piece of twisted metal lying on a surgical swab and said: “The shrapnel we took from a nine-year-old’s bowels. It had gone through his back.”
Today, Prof Abu-Sittah had an update: “We have run out of blood. We are the only functioning hospital in the whole of Gaza now and we don’t have any blood. We are having wounded die after the surgery because we cannot transfuse them.
Destroyed buildings in southern Gaza (Getty Images)“We’ve run out of ketamine which we used as a substitute for anaesthesia. This morning I’ve been doing really painful procedures with no anaesthetic, not even morphine.”
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Last week a number of British citizens, including doctors, were able to leave the Gaza Strip via Egypt.
Mr Abu-Sittah chose to stay. He explained: “I am one of three surgeons in a hospital that has 150 patients and growing, the only hospital in the whole of Gaza city.
“I can’t leave. We can’t leave. It’s not a megalomaniac ‘I’m going to save the world’ thing. It’s literally if I leave, my space is not filled.”
One of his “beautiful” boys back home in London turns 16 today and he vowed: “We will celebrate soon.”
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